


Amen

by Aezlo



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), Depression, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon, Suicide, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 04:02:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21112331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aezlo/pseuds/Aezlo
Summary: Oh, is there a heaven? You'd know now you've beenAre those your stars that hang in the sky?Or are they man made? A trick of the light?And is there a God up there? If so, where does he hide?'Cause the devil is raging inside my mindAnd is there a moment where it all makes sense?When saying goodbye, doesn't feel like the end?Amber Run - Amen





	Amen

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic about a depressed, suicidal Crowley and a pining Aziraphale that seized upon me after listening to Amen so many bloody times (yes, I tweaked the lyrics, sue me). Really it's got so many musical cues in it, but Amen is the driving force.
> 
> Please take care of yourself, friends.

“Darling, is everything alright?” Aziraphale asks, as Crowley stares listlessly out at the foot traffic. He’s allowing himself more _darling, _more _dearest_, more _light of my life_ than before the Apocalypse. He owes him after _we’re not friends_, after _we can’t fraternize_, and maybe with enough repetition he’ll get to the ones that count: _My love. My one and only. Mine._

It makes Crowley smile, and that’s so rare these days.

“Mmm,” Crowley offers in a soft rumble, shaking his head and shrugging, “just tired.”

After the Apocalypse, after the trials, Crowley sleeps for a month. One solid month, right through, like time doesn’t mean a damn thing to him, like Aziraphale doesn’t sit over his bed counting his heartbeats and following the up and down susurrations of his breath, biting his fingers in terror that they might suddenly stop.

“If you needed the rest, you could have told me,” Aziraphale sniffs, sipping his cider and sighing at the delightful blend of spices that thrum warmth through his chest.

“’m fine,” Crowley gently pats the table near his hand, “’m fine, angel.” 

* * *

He can prod Crowley into talking sometimes, and today he’s almost his jittery, fast-talking self, but his voice is stuck in a low monotone, and his gestures are tight and close to the body, not the lovely sweeping ones he’d usually indulge in.

“I wish they’d never thought of plastics,” he grouses softly. “They just keep makin’ ‘em! And now they don’t even recycle, it’s not _cost-effective_,” he sneers.

“Well,” Aziraphale struggles a little to keep up with his lanky, anger-fueled steps. “Well, it’s not sustainable. It’ll all come to a head eventually,” he gives him a sad smile.

“Yeah,” Crowley sighs, looking distant and tired as he rubs at his hair. He’s growing it out, and it’s at a slightly awkward stage, a few inches long but not long enough to be _long_ and not short enough to be _short_. “S’pose we’ll be here for that too,” he says so softly that Aziraphale thinks he’s not meant to have heard it.

* * *

Crowley starts giving him things. He’s always been indulgent with him, a bottle of outrageously old wine, a book he’s been hunting for in earnest for a century with little luck, a small porcelain cup with angel wings.

“Saw it and thought of you,” he’d grinned, smile crinkling his eyes and Aziraphale’s heart _sings_, but it’s 1994 and he can’t do a damn thing about it.

“Dearest,” Aziraphale quirks his head as Crowley settles a large schefflera in one of the corners with a good amount of reflected light. “Are you moving, or something?” The bookstore is starting to look positively lively with the number of plants he’s brought in. A tiny pink cactus perching on a display shelf, a bowl of tillandsias scowling in his kitchen, a proud juniper preening next to the stairs to his apartment.

“Jus’ cleaning,” Crowley dusts his pants off, smiling wanly at him. The light catches his glasses just right, and he can see through the tinted glass and his eyes look so sad that there’s a crash as his teacup suddenly meets the floor.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale husks, suddenly at the demon’s side and reaching up to remove his glasses. “Love, what’s wrong?” He doesn’t even think about the term, it just slips right out of his heart and he has to see him, has to know that he’s wrong, that Crowley’s not that far gone.

Crowley ducks his hand, keeping his glasses firmly on his face and frowning a little at him. “Nothin’” he sniffs, looking down at him for a long moment before shaking his head and smiling ruefully. “Nothing,” he grins tightly, “Let’s go for a picnic, angel.”

* * *

Aziraphale’s seen him like this before. After the bubonic plague, there was famine and plague, and war and plague, and plague and then more plague after that, and Crowley had turned up at his side even though he wasn’t in danger, and they’d had a tense fight a few decades earlier.

“Think this is it,” Crowley husks, voice so dull that there’s no punctuation, no question. His glasses are shattered in his hands, and his eyes are so dim that if Aziraphale couldn’t see him breathing he might think him dead.

Aziraphale can’t help himself, curls an arm around his shoulder and gently rocks him back and forth.

“I think this is the plan. I think this is life,” he offers simply, “It’s ineffable.”

It’s not enough. But Crowley lets him take him to his hotel room, feed him, tuck him in. He’s a ghostly companion for a few months, staring at the wall listlessly unless Aziraphale pulls him to join him in his rounds.

He starts at the smell of something as they walk one day, and Aziraphale sees a demon on the horizon.

“Best be leaving,” Crowley husks. “Sorry for the trouble,” he kneels and kisses Aziraphale’s hand like a knight pledging to his queen, but there’s a small lightness in his serpent eyes as he peers up at him, a quirk of a smile just there.

Aziraphale’s heart stays in his throat for so long after he’s gone that he’s worried it’s going to just be there forever.

_I love you, I love you, I love you_.

* * *

Sometimes he can pretend it doesn’t hurt so much. Love isn’t supposed to hurt, it’s supposed to be warm and friendly and inviting. Oh, he knows in reality it’s not all that, it’s _work_, but it’s such a seductive concept.

Loving Crowley aches, worse than the war wound, worse than any mortal or metaphysical wound he’ll ever encounter. He stares at his red head leaving him through a busy crowd, heart throbbing painfully at the warm, open smile, the “Oh, I’ll do that one, my treat.” The fact that Crowley turns _Hamlet_ into one of the most well-known plays in the world, _for him_, makes his eyes burn.

Crowley has looked at him so often through the centuries, glasses ticked down his nose, something unguarded for a brief flicker of a second. The heart beating through his yellow eyes says _anything for you_, and Aziraphale’s heart rushes up to meet it _yes, yes, **anything**. _

How can something like this hurt so much? How can sitting in a car just outside of his bookshop, not two feet from the demon, feel like they’re screaming at each other from across a yawning chasm?

_I need you like I need air to breathe. I can’t stand being apart from you. I brush my fingers against yours and it feels like salvation. I can’t stand being without you but I have to. We have to. We can’t, we can’t, not yet, we can’t._

“You go too fast for me, Crowley.”

* * *

After the schefflera, Crowley stops gifting him things quite so obviously. Aziraphale stumbles on a snake-pin on his reading desk used to hold up a dark robe in Rome. One of his old display shelves, previously full of dusty newspapers that he’s been meaning to toss is full of poetry, signed first editions just like he likes, but it’s _Anthony, may your love see the light of day_, and _Starlight, I’ll never forget that night_.

Crowley avoids him for two days, and when Aziraphale suddenly pins him, not physically, just pressing close enough that Crowley stills and leans back against the wall looking wan, he quivers and whimpers softly.

“Don’t have room for ‘em,” he sniffs, eyes darting around. “Got a bunch of new plants,” he rubs his nose, desperately pleading with his eyes for Aziraphale to back off, get out of his space, leave this _alone_, please.

“Of course,” Aziraphale whispers, taking a shaky step back. “Of course, but you’ll have to take them back eventually. They’re yours.”

“S-sure,” Crowley shivers. “Sure, of course, angel.”

* * *

It’s getting too cold for picnics, though they’ve been having plenty. He’s started holding his hand as they watch people toss frisbees, dogs and children cavorting about. He’d expected Crowley to yawn and nap, maybe rest his head in his lap, but Crowley just stares out at the people with something unreadable in his face. He hardly even reacts to his hand being held, chuckling as Aziraphale quickly backs off with a _oh yes, you’re my best friend_, too terrified to fully commit just yet. It’s been months since the apocalypse-that-wasn’t, and he still can’t quite fathom that he’s allowed to finally sooth the pain he’s been in for millennia. He’s worried he might go into some sort of shock if he lets himself sup on the forbidden fruit now, as if his soul needs to be eased into it after millennia of the barest sips.

They sink into the Ritz with practiced ease, and Crowley actually laughs. He laughs so hard that he has to pluck off his glasses and wipe his eyes, and he’s loose and he’s easy, and something taut in Aziraphale’s chest eases at the sight. _There you are, my love, there you are_.

* * *

Crowley hurts. Since the fall, he’s always hurt, a gaping wound left where her love used to be. He tries to ignore it, fill it with booze or plants or physical pain. It doesn’t go away. He discorporates in the hopes that it might ease, but he gasps awake and it _hurts_, and he doesn’t even have nerves, or a body, that’s not _fair_.

He tolerates it most of the time. Grits his teeth and cackles, _fuck you, I’ll live through this just to spite you. **Fuck. You**_.

After eleven years of a very normal boy, and one week of panic and horror chasing around London, he sits in his flat and stares bleakly out the window. He thinks of Gabriel’s purple eyes, so sure of everything, of Aziraphale’s soft blue ones as he earnestly tells him how he’d pulled one over on Michael. _A rubber duck, dear! Honestly, it was the most fun I’ve had in ages._

He’s tired. He’s so tired and it just goes on and on. He loves the world, the universe, people and everything else and he wants them to keep going on and on forever. They deserve to, they’re lovely and she loves them, and she’d been rather clear about them taking care of this, letting humans be whatever they wanted to be. He’s continually blown away by how much the idiots upstairs and down forget that.

He’s saved the world, and he’s starting to wonder if he can just let it go. He hardly did anything to keep it going, and surely it will just spin on and on without him. She’ll keep that promise to him, he knows that. She won’t talk to him, bless him with her presence, but he knows her too well after all this time. She’s spiteful, but she’s funny, and she loves humans as much as he does. More, probably.

* * *

He's cleaning when he stumbles on it. He likes to clean manually, no miracles, just the warm burn up his arm as he rubs lemon-scented products into wood and swipes sprays across marble. It’s soothing, honestly, if he’s feeling a little out of it, out of touch with the world. He’ll put on a record and scrub the ceiling, dust the shelves, steam clean the rug.

At times he considers making a mess just so that he can clean it up. The idea honestly makes him feel sick, and he does his best not to think about it again.

He softly sprays the glass on his Mona Lisa, smiling at the inscription da Vinci left him. He wipes the glass down, even though it was already sparkling, and gently pulls the frame back. He wipes the dust up around the edges of the safe, and taps in the combination to the lock, leaning his ear to it like he’s trying to guess at the numbers by the sound of the tumblers.

When he opens the safe, he stands stock still for an hour, staring. Adam restored everything. He’d near-perfectly restored Aziraphale’s shop, though he’s heard the angel gripe about one or two lost notes and an ancient, irreplaceable fountain pen with surprising vitriol. The Bentley is more sheen and clean than when he bought it.

There’s a tan, tartan thermos sitting in his safe, and the hole in his chest throbs at the sight.

* * *

He hadn’t wanted a suicide pill. It hadn’t even occurred to him until Aziraphale spat the words at him. It was a weapon, something to keep him alive so that he could stay here with him. Maybe not like either of them would want, maybe not hand-in-hand, loving and hugging and caressing and—

When he hands him a thermos in 1967, it actually buzzes in his hand. He doesn’t recognize the sensation until so many decades later as he gently pulls the thermos from his safe with shaky, ungloved hands.

It feels like Sol, pulled from his chest and spun out softly, hung with a soft pat into the sky. She appears at his shoulder suddenly, and her changeable face smiles indulgently at him.

“It’s lovely,” she caresses the ball of gases with an unknowable hand. “I think I’ll use this one,” she turns to stare at the sky, slowly populating with a myriad of stars from his brethren. “Go make me some more,” she grins wildly at him like an excited child, jumping up and down with pleasure, and he giggles, suffused with pride and love.

* * *

He shuts it away in the safe after staring at it for hours, slams the painting so hard that something cracks.

He leans against the wall and thinks about Aziraphale so hard that his head hurts, his heart hurts, _everything hurts_.

_I’m staying, I’m staying, I won’t leave you, I can’t do that to you._

* * *

Some days are better than others. Most are worse, these days. He feels dim and sluggish, like everything has a smudgy, wet filter over it. Humans brush against him, and shove and ruin and hurt one another. They’re so good at it that he wonders why he ever thought to try.

Every day the news looks even worse than when he’d used to worry about the apocalypse. Wars, and plagues, and global warming. The bubonic plague even crops up once as two idiots decide to eat a couple of _fucking _rats in the twenty-first century.

It’s the end times, but it’s not.

“Are you testing _me?_” he asks the gray sky, walking home from the park where he’d met Aziraphale to feed the ducks

* * *

The Bentley tries to lock him in the car when he gets home, tries to start driving him to the bookstore. He lets it get him a block away before miracling himself out to walk back to his flat, and the car keeps on driving without a driver or passenger. It’s appropriate, he supposes. He’d like Aziraphale to have the car, too, even if he won’t drive it.

He’s already written the letters. A contract stating _sell it all, I don’t fucking care_, _give the proceeds to the angel_, and a piece of parchment dotted with tears and a surprisingly curt letter in his fine, spiky hand.

_I love you, Aziraphale. I will love you unto the ends of time, unto the ends of the universe, nothing will ever change that. I am yours in ways that no human poet could ever conceive of. I only wish I was stronger. I can’t do this anymore. It’s too much, and I miss Her. I’m not under the illusion that She’ll see me, or listen, or talk to me. But at least she’ll let me stop it. She’s always allowed us the free will to damn ourselves._

_I love you, and I’m sorry. _

* * *

It’s a boring Tuesday when he feels it. The sky outside is gray, and he’s rereading Thoreau for some reason, musing about _Walden_ and wondering if Crowley might like a vacation to the countryside. It’d be lovely and green there, and he’s always liked plants and nature.

It feels like the earth tilting on its axis, like Satan rumbling through the streets, like an earthquake fit to split the earth wide open.

He falls from his chair panting. _Oh my god, he’s gone, he’s gone_.

* * *

The Bentley is outside the shop, idling, and he gets in without thinking. There’s no driver, but it takes him where he needs to go. He steps out on the sidewalk, feeling like he’s in a dream or a nightmare as he looks up at the apartment complex. Crowley’s magic is quiet on the top floor, usually he can feel it by now, a trickster’s tremble on the edge of his consciousness.

_It’s fine, just put one foot in front of the other, it’s fine_.

He walks up the steps, not trusting the elevator, just stepping up and up and up. The door opens for him like he lives there, like it does every time he’s stopped by, even though all of Crowley’s magic is dead, no, no,_ dormant_. He’s sleeping, it’s the eighteenth century again, it’s fine.

As he enters the kitchen, he can’t lie to himself anymore, tears streaming unbidden down his cheeks.

There’s a pile of smoldering, smoking clothes on the other side of countertop, a thermos cracked on the ground, and two pieces of paper flittering in the wind whistling in through the broken window. The plants in the other room are banal, not recalcitrant or stubborn, just plants, and Aziraphale falls to his knees and crawls helplessly towards him.

_No, no, no, let it be a dream, please, God, I’m begging you_.

He coils around the pile of clothes, reeking of ozone and sulfur, and sobs so hard that his wings shunt out, his entire true form pops out to curl around this last piece of the one thing he’s loved more than anything else in the world.

* * *

They’d both worried, silently amongst themselves, if loving Crowley might make Aziraphale fall. Love isn’t a sin, though, even love for a demon.

Losing Crowley, though. Losing Crowley burns him from the inside out as he rages at the heavens, smashes Gabriel’s face in as he tries to push him out of Heaven, topples architecture, busts in and snarls at the Metatron with wings already burned black and sooty.

“Give him back,” he howls, a pillar of hellfire, and no demon should be able to stand here and stare down the Metatron with unshaking certainty. “He’s mine, _she can’t have him_.”

* * *

It’s not unheard of for a demon or angel to come back from the brink. Ligur came back, took a few months but he oozed out of the sulfur pools and slunk up next to Hastur as if nothing had changed at all. He still teases him about the shrieks and sobs, but there’s something adorably fond in his changeable eyes as he does.

After Aziraphale very nearly boils the Metatron, God slips from her office and ushers him in. It should burn to be in her presence, the ache of her love lost in his chest should pulse like a phantom limb.

He grins wolfishly at her, _I do not need **your** love, I have no desire to be loved by a creature as fickle as you ever again_, _you are no loss to me_.

“He won’t come for me,” she offers sadly, her face flickering through a million facades, “I’ve tried.”

“He will for me,” Aziraphale grits a certain grin, something manic in his wild sea-foam eyes.

“He will,” she nods softly, looking away from his unearthly fire, “he will.”

“Come, Aziraphale,” she whispers, gifting him his angelic name in spite of his fall. She looks at him for a moment before gesturing for the wall to open, longing to caress and sooth, _I’m sorry this hurts but you are stronger for this. You are exactly how I made you and you are perfect_.

“Come,” she gestures and the wall opens, showing a vast expanse of sky above a cyclone of clouds.

“I wish you luck,” she whispers into his ear, brushing his shoulder with an unfathomable hand and disappearing into cloudy vapor.

Aziraphale suddenly feels very small. He’s been running on a blaze of howling rage, steamrolling everything in his path, unable to accept the truth of Crowley’s loss. As he takes in the pool of clouds that he himself crawled from so many eons ago, his emotional fervor drains.

He falls to his knees, sobbing helplessly, squalling at the heavens. _He’s gone and he’s not coming back_.

How could he be so presumptuous to think to bring Crowley back? To force him to endure that pain again?

He crawls towards the pool helplessly, anyway. Perhaps it’s holiness will allow him to join the demon. _Together again, old friend? _

It stings to be so near it, but he leans over it, lolling his hand in, tears falling into the unfathomable depths of her angelic pools.

“My love,” he croaks, because he’s supposed to be calling him. “My love, I can’t ask this of you,” he whispers, trembling. “I’m sorry,” he whines, curling into a ball and gasping at how much it hurts. Losing her love hurts, but the gaping wound where Crowley should be hurts so much more, it howls and screams and he can’t concentrate on anything else.

The sudden buzz as the wound seals hits him like a slap.

“Aziraphale,” a hand sprinkled with stardust caresses his head. “Angel, why are you crying?” his voice is more musical than he remembers, almost too beautiful to endure.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale gasps, eyes watering at the brilliant gold halo crowning his head. “Oh my dear,” he reaches up, and Crowley smiles softly, bending down into him.

“You look good in black,” Crowley husks into his neck, and Aziraphale laughs.

“Don’t leave me,” he grips his white robe with clawed hands. “Don’t ever leave me again, please,” he rasps.

“Never,” Crowley kisses his neck. “I’m so sorry,” his voice goes dark, and he quivers as he holds him. “I tried, Aziraphale, I tried.”

“I know, love, I know,” Aziraphale pets his back, marveling at the soft white feathers under his fingers. “Let me help you next time, you serpent,” Aziraphale pinches his side. “I’ll carry your burdens, just let me in.”

“Mmm,” Crowley laughs, tinkling in his ear. “I’ll carry yours if you carry mine,” he hefts him up in his arms, glittering ivory from the elbow down.

“Oh,” Aziraphale flushes. “Oh, well,” he grins up at the angel with russet curls tumbling down his back. “Yes, I think that’s agreeable, starlight.” Crowley laughs beautifully as he walks them out of heaven, glowing in pale yellows and pinks.

* * *

A demon and an angel live in a small bookshop and nursery in Soho. One of them glows so brightly when he takes off his glasses, it’s blinding like staring directly at the setting sun. The other smolders and toasts with a glass of Chateau le Pape in hand, scaring away the customers with an impressive glower and a fanged smile.

Queen is almost always playing on their stereo, and you might think they’d get tired of just one, particular song for how often it plays.

_Ooh, you make me live_  
_ Whatever this world can give to me_  
_ It's you, you're all I see_  
_ Ooh, you make me live now honey_  
_ Ooh, you make me live_


End file.
